Willow Read

This is a short story I wrote over the last year or so, and just re-discovered:

Hello. My name was Sarah. When I was Sarah, I was about 19 years old, timid, meek, moon-faced, and I was the main character. My author hadn’t gotten very far with my story. He has forgotten about me, and I’ve been stuck on his hard drive for three years now. As a character, I’m pretty underdeveloped, so it’s easy to get acquainted with me: he didn’t get much further than my name. About a year ago, I renamed myself Willow T. Read, which took out all of my development as a character called “Sarah.” It’s not a very good name. It doesn’t fit me at all!

I had just decided to move on from my quaint life at home and find adventure. He had just gotten to the part where adventure wasn’t as happy as I had thought it would be when he forgot to continue writing my story. So, I’m stuck floating around on his external, waiting for him to either remember to finish my story, or delete my file.

Now I’m Willow, and probably a bit older (four years does that to a character), but seeing as my author forgot me, I’ve just sort of been wandering around in some of the other stories that he’s written. They’re pretty good ones. Sometimes I’m the roommate who offers good advice, or the sister who used to like the heroine’s love interest, or once I played the friend who invited the heroine to the play where the hero and she met. I’m usually the woman who comes just before the true love.

It goes like this: In the beginning of the story, I’m usually in love with the hero, or we‘re just becoming interested in each other. It always sounds like I am manipulating the hero into being with me; I like the hero a lot (well, he’s the hero: wouldn’t you?), and he’s starting to settle for me (the heroine hasn’t shown up yet, and naturally I’m a “settle,” otherwise, why would he leave me? If he left me, and I weren‘t a settle, then we can only conclude that he eventually will leave the heroine, which muddies up the “happily ever after“ part. So it‘s settled, I‘m a settle). Then the hero meets the heroine (not me), and then he realizes that I’m all wrong for him, and that he’s settling, and he doesn‘t have to settle!

He then leaves me, without really breaking up with me (that wouldn’t look good for the hero, and technically, there was no commitment between us. It might even be the morally right thing to do, because of something I did to the heroine. I hate that part, it makes me nauseous to think about. Why do I always have to do some stupid thing?), but the heroine doesn’t know that, and so she’s given up on the hero(prematurely, we weren‘t usually even dating. Is it just me, or does that show a lack of character?

Shouldn‘t a genuine heroine hold on to her dreams, instead of giving up prematurely, on the grounds of someone else almost-having their true love?). In the final scene, he declares his love for her, asks her to marry him, she says yes, and then they both live happily ever after, and have beautiful children together. What do I do? Find another story to invade, of course.

I’m getting pretty tired of invading stories, but waiting in mine is very difficult. As a character, I feel the need to get around. Sometimes I go into the programs, like solitaire, or the windows media player. I try to tell myself that’s all I need as a character, something to do, something to work on, but I find myself entering into other stories most of the time. It’s not very satisfying, but it’s better than the dolor of Microsoft Office Excel 2007, or the lonely landscape of Adobe Reader 9.

I’m worried, actually. I don’t think my author is going to know how to write my story if he ever remembers me. I’ve changed a lot since he first punched my description into his word processor:

“Sarah was a shy girl with a great love of people. She lived with her parents, but one day, found she’d grown up, and realized, as children usually do, that it was time to seek out her life and adventure on her own. So, she moved to the great university, and found herself surrounded by a world unfamiliar and intriguing, frightening yet fascinating. She was surprised to find herself longing for the home of her childhood. Alas, the threshold of adventure had been crossed, and as we all know, once passed, the adventure must ensue before the heroine may return home for keeps. This is Sarah’s adventure.”

The irony is, the “world” is no longer unfamiliar to me. I only had three words at “home,“ and I must say, “the world” feels much homier than I assume the author assumed. In all of the stories my author writes, he uses the same “world,” and as a sideline character, I’ve become very familiar with the ways of his people, the turns of his streets, and the clock that ticks on making everything happen day after day, for almost everyone(but me).

To be honest, I’m pretty tired of playing the quasi-villain, or having just really small roles. I found another character that had been abandoned- his name is John(another bland name, like Sarah), and his story was started, made tragic, then didn’t finish. He was experiencing the same yawning chasm of nothing as I do: the author had set his story aside. He was impatient, waiting for it to happen.

We tried to fall in love. Part of the problem here is that we didn’t really know how, without our writer’s guidance. He is actually vital to the very process of falling in love, which I think is cruel- the author, I mean. Call me bitter, because bitter I am. I think it’s rude that we very American characters (our writer wrote stories about some other cultures, and those characters were oddly American, too) were forced to wait for the magical touch of our writer’s prose, when we were also written to be fiercely independent. We were the most dependent group of forgotten independents I could imagine existing in any capacity.

I found it ironic, too, that we despised the arranged marriages. I was talking to a very American Arabian princess our writer had written about for a little, and put aside like so many of us, but her story was being worked on again, so she had new ideas. She worked hard during the day, when our writer was writing, so at night she didn’t hang out long, but went to bed at a decent time. It’s funny, because you always want to stay up late, but you’d rather live the life that sends you to bed early than have that opportunity.

Her name was Jasmine for a while, but then it changed to Serena, and that fit her pretty well. She had struggled during the hiatus period of her story, when the author took his break from it, with wanting so much to finally get married. He had really wired her to want it, so being kept from it was legitimate torture. She had, at that point, been forced to agree to an arranged marriage that her father, the Sultan, was putting together. The man that she was arranged to marry was a good man, a good character, but she was just not in love with him.

She often lamented the decision the author made to keep them from falling in love. He would have been a good husband to her, she’s sure of it. Her father approved of him, obviously, so why not? He was a stable character, and somewhat interesting to talk to, even. What more could she ask for?

The boy she finally was allowed to fall in love with, who the author decided it was her destiny to fall in love with, was not as good a choice, in her logical thinking, as the man she had been arranged to marry. He was a peasant, of course. He had the usual emotional baggage associated with a life of poverty and abuse. He couldn’t keep a job, so he really wasn’t much of a provider. He was really excited to be living in a palace, but Serena worried about the marriage continually from the very first hints of their falling in love.

He was all wrong for the pressures of becoming the nation’s ruler, let alone the husband of a fully grown woman with expectations. She wasn’t picky, I’d say, but wanted some of the normal, nice qualities a woman has been taught to expect from a husband. The writer had signs he put into his stories that tells the reader who will be falling in love with whom: as characters watching his stories progress, we notice lots of patterns within his works of literature. We laugh about how reading one story is much like reading another, but we still long for our own stories to be written out, and for us to be given the permission to finally live “happily ever after.”

Those who knew that they were the hero in the story felt confident that they would be given happiness to live with, ever after. Some characters worried that they would be turned into villains, forever consigned to the misery of villainy’s fruits: usually loneliness, bitterness, and the appearance of stupidity. I felt badly for them, but also noted the similarity between their eventual states, and my own current one.

I wished most nights that he would just delete my file. I watched the group of characters who were on his shelf appear and disappear. The group who stuck around, the stories that got forgotten, all came and went, though I stayed. I listened to them cry and complain about their stories not being written, and I tried to give them advice. I wanted them to feel hopeful, that it was coming for them, because I wanted to be able to feel hopeful too. Eventually I had legitimate hope for them, because I saw every story but mine get finished and printed, saved and exported. I knew that other stories would be finished, as long as they were not my own. I longed for it, but I felt the hope for it slowly ebb out of my soul. I let it be sponged from me, leaving me dry and colorless.

I knew I didn’t have to let it happen. I knew that there still could be hope, and that giving up like I did was not going to help my story get written. I mean, a story about a dry, grey, dolor character was not exactly what publishers are looking for. But here I am! Grey as I am, waiting for my story to come around, but not really hoping for it. It’s a nice dream, but the author had more interesting stories to write, like stories about travelers and adventurers, princesses and warriors.

I’m just a regular, frizzy haired student, who can never seem to graduate from college (that‘s where the author left off, so that's where I continually am). No matter how hard I work at my classes(and they are endless, by the way), I come in average. My life remains average, because I’m too busy coming up with average grades to do anything above or even below average with my social life.

My sense of adventure died on the forteenth of last January. It was an especially dolor day, and it was cold, too. I realized that all it was doing was distracting me from any kind of happiness: you know, the happiness of the mundane, the kind of happiness you get when you can’t see anything else to compare your average life with, so you think you’re happy, even though really you’re miserable and moderately good at lying to yourself. It didn’t work, because boring people aren’t actually happy. They’re just too boring to be able to change it, so they drum on. They’re too boring to even think about suicide, which is almost a pity. I wish I could, sometimes. But, I stick with my murder fantasy, and call it a day. Suicide is super depressing, and I’m depressed as it is.

So, John. It was like Serena and her arranged man: but it’s funny, because it’s just a different arranger. We’re meant to make destiny out like it’s something special, but the author is just another Sultan telling us who to marry and how to define happiness as endings, not beginnings. It was the same for me with him. I tried to fall in love with him, and I wanted to(so badly)! But, the author had other plans for both of us, supposedly, but for him definitely, so it just didn’t happen. We couldn’t find love.

We became good friends, instead, which really felt like a shortchange to both of us, but we dealt with the unfairness of our hard drive universe the best we could. John stayed with me, on the shelf, for almost two years before his story was picked up again. I had really thought maybe this was a companion: maybe we’ll be on this shelf, together, forever! But the author couldn’t even let me have that, apparently, because his story finished with the bold-faced “happily ever after” just like all his other stories.

I didn’t always get along with all the other shelf sitters. There may have been other characters sitting on the shelf the same amount of time as myself, but I just didn’t care to interact with them. I think that we felt the same way: anxious, trying to be hopeful, sometimes bitter- but I noticed that some of them were like dark, flat little holes waiting impatiently to be inflated by the creator. I hated thinking that I was like that.

That’s when I realized that Sarah was not my name. “If I had a name,” I thought, “it would be a good name.” The kind that didn’t make me feel too average, or too out of the ordinary, either. It would be pretty and feminine, but not long or hard to spell. It wouldn’t be dated or faddish, but timeless. Like Willow. “Yes,” I thought, “I do believe Willow is such a name. Perhaps the next time I invade a story, I will ask the other characters to call me Willow.”

I did a lot more sneaking around, then, with my new name. I did research. I focused on everything but love. I learned about Ghandi and termites, Canadian history and making eggnog. I read about the tragedy of the Titanic, and a strange thing happened. I cried. I was never on the boat, and I didn’t know any of the characters who died that night, but I felt sadness for them, as if I had been.

Despite this sadness I began to feel for others, I generally felt happier. I saw that some people’s complete stories were less desirable than my half-done one. I also found that a lot of the other characters were lonely like me, and I developed some really close friendships with some really neat ladies.

It was then that I noticed something, during my sneaking around. My writer wrote beautiful characters into heroes; they had great skills, and quick wits. They were lovely and unique, and no one surpassed them in something. The ugly ones slew dragons, the awkward ones wielded magic. The clumsy ones had elaborate destinies, and the small ones made hard journeys and saved the entire world. The thing is, that’s who they were. They hadn’t waited for the author to make them special, but they had chosen to be those things all by themselves. The author showed them the path to make the most of their story, to make it a real bestseller.

“I am awkward, clumsy, and small,: I thought, “but I am no dragon slayer, magician, and not destined to do anything, especially save the world. There’s no one in my story who loves me as the characters of other stories are loved, but that makes sense to me. I don’t have what they do: the loved ones are kind, brave, gentle, and usually good looking. I have no one to be kind to, nothing to be brave for, no life to make gentle, and I wish that I could say that I’m ugly, because that would at least entitle me to some merit, negative though it is.”

Then something remarkable occurred to me: my creator had not failed me, rather, I had failed him. Up until I had become Willow, I had been a static, self-absorbed character without potential. I had expected the author to exist for me. These other characters who were awkward, ugly, and poor- they also had compassion, courage, and love.

I thought then about Serena. She had been my friend, because she was compassionate. She genuinely pitied me, and pity to such a great degree is quite a beautiful kind of love. We had thought, when her story was being written, that her original match was the better choice. We were confused why the maker would put her with someone who seemed so unsuited to the task of husband and Sultan, when someone who seemed so much better was there for the taking.

The remarkable thing is, the author knows his characters better than we assumed. She listened to the author, and Serena’s husband rose to the occasion. He proved his love for her every day, and grew into a judicious and clear-sighted Sultan. The man she almost married eventually married a princess from a neighboring kingdom. He built quite a harem for himself, actually, starting with three very pretty concubines that various uncles and cousins gave him as wedding presents. Serena, being the compassionate woman she is, and myself, being the random character I am, helped the pitiful princess make her own story complete, ending with a certain irony to the collection of women the husband had obtained. We were happy to find that our author had a sense of humor, and though being male himself, was quite the feminist.

I became content with waiting for my story to get picked up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have a life, I just realized there was more to life than romance. I made friends. I went home to visit my parents. I hadn’t realized that I could do that! For fictional characters, they were actually very genuine people.

I never did get married. When I died, I finally spoke to the author. I told him how angry I had been, when he never picked up my story. I told him that I had been happy, eventually in my life, but I really didn’t attribute that happiness to him.

“Why didn’t you finish my story? I was an old woman, still waiting for my prince to come, and then finally you killed me off. All that waiting, and my patience availed me nothing.”

“Sarah-”
“Willow.” I cut off the author!
“Willow, you probably should have brought this up before your death.”
“I thought it was obvious. Who doesn’t want to get married?”

“Marriage isn’t a blissful ending, it’s a rough beginning. You never told me that you wanted that. I’d never give you something with so many strings attached without knowing that it would make you happy. It’s supposed to make you happy, but it also makes you sad, and stressed, and spent, and angry.”

“I wanted that.”
“You should have asked.”
“Why haven’t I ever talked to you before?”
“I don’t know; I’ve always been here. I’m the author, after all.”
“I wish I had told you before I died.”
“Well I’m the author, I can change that.”
“No you can’t, I’m dead!”

“I’m the author, no one’s dead unless I want them to be dead. I don’t want you to be dead and never really having lived.”

“I’m not a very good-selling-type story, am I?”
“No. And I really need to sell.”
“So what are you going to do with a dead me?”
“Wake you up.”
“I’m also old.”

“No, I think you were just sleeping for a little, and have only dreamed that you’re old. And dead. Dream.”

“Can you do that?”

“Of course I can; I’m the author. Dream sequences sell like hot chocolate in January.”

“Where will I re-begin?”
“I’m gonna wake you up… now. It’s time you woke up, little Willow.”
“Yes, it’s time I woke up!”